These are some of the measures being looked at by British authorities in a bid to curb immigration, with a report now showing the British capital is not just full, but white ethnic Britons are for the first time officially a minority.

This week the government has conceded it is looking at unique ways to curb the desire for Europeans to live in the UK with as many as 250,000 Bulgarians and Romanians expected to move to Britain in December.

The move follows the expiry of caps in place since 2005 which limited citizens from these countries to live and work in other EU states.

Downing Street confirmed ''options'' including a negative campaign to correct the impression London's streets were ''paved with gold''.

''As you would expect, the Government is considering what options there may be and the process of looking into these and considering them is under way,'' a Number 10 spokesman said.

''The issue here is around dealing with potential damage to the UK labour market and potential scope for curbing immigration to that end.''

In the borough of Newham, the census showed one quarter of homes spoke no English at all.Mayor Sir Robin Wales said the council sometime ago decided to remove foreign language newspapers from libraries in a bid to promote greater integration.

''Through the continued provision of free English language publications in our libraries we are focusing our attention on helping residents to gain English language skills so they can access a full range of opportunities in particular sustainable employment,'' he said.

Sir Robin said with more than 200 languages and dialects spoken in his council area it was one of the most diverse in the world but he had to ensure some did not feel isolation by their ethnicity and felt included in the broad community.

''The feeling of unity in our community is real: 87 per cent of residents believe people from different backgrounds get on well together. This hasn't happened all by itself but through commitment and hard work by everyone in the borough. But we must never be complacent.''

Census report shocks Britain

This month in the London borough of Newham, council workers stopped stacking the rack of foreign language newspapers in their local libraries.

Council brochures on local services in a multitude of languages have also been cut back as have translation services and funding for single ethnic or religious events have been banned.

The borough in London's east, which last year played host to the Olympics, had always celebrated its multicultural diversity but last month a Census report was released that changed everything.

It showed in one quarter of homes in the area no-one spoke English as their main language and more than half its population was born abroad.

In nearby Brent and Westminster the figure was just over 22 per cent of homes where English was not spoken.

More broadly, British whites were now found to be the minority in London for the first time in history and England as a whole was now the third most densely populated country in the EU behind only Malta and the Netherlands.

It's a staggering document and has prompted all levels of government to urgently rethink their policies the white Protestant Briton no longer is the norm.

For the mayor of Newham Sir Robin Wales, it was always understood his area was one of the most multicultural in western Europe but the census showed he needed to do more to encourage ''Britishness'' or risk isolation and fragmentation due to the language barrier.

''People have chosen to come to this country, they want to be part of it and we try to encourage it,'' he said.

It's fair to say the 2011 census released just before Christmas last year has stunned Britain, particularly since it showed the biggest population surge in a 10-year period since the first modern census was conducted in 1801 and the biggest increase by percentage in a century.

While it had been obvious for years the social make-up of the nation and in particular its capital had been evolving, the extent of the change was staggering.

''It was a reminder of how much we had changed, like catching your reflection after 10 years without looking in a mirror; you know you've aged in that time but it's still a shock to see it,'' said London School of Economics director Professor Tony Travers, a researcher on social policy reform and advisor to two House of Commons committees related to local government and children, schools and families.

What the Census found was the number of people born outside the UK had risen by more than 50 per cent in the 10 years to 2011 to 7.5 million, equivalent to more than one in 10 people; just 44.9 per cent of Londoners described themselves as white British; English was not spoken in between 20 and 25 per cent of London homes; more than one million school children lived in homes where English was not spoken; the UK had more people over the age of 60 than under the age of 16; the population of England and Wales leapt seven per cent to 56.1 million with more than half the increase due to migration; the Christian religion was in steep decline with four million fewer Christians now than in 2001.

On the statistic about religion, Christians saw a 12.4 per cent decline in the decade to 2011 with those with no religion up by 10 percent.

The Muslim faith was up 1.8 per cent to 5 per cent of the population in a decade, with small rises also recorded by Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists.

The Irish were a decade ago the most dominant population of those born abroad now they ranked fourth behind those from India, Poland and Pakistan.

The Poles particularly had a huge rise in number from just 68,000 migrants in 2001 to almost 580,000 10 years on.

Anecdotally, it's said there are more Polish births registered at the Polish embassy in London than in Warsaw with the decline prompting a worried Polish government to look at ways of attracting young adults of child bearing age to return home.

They're not and instead the Polish government now just counts the British-born Poles in their own census as ''nationals'', thereby double counting the population.

''There's no doubt the census provides concrete evidence for something that most people in London and to some extent most people in the UK realised that the make-up of the population had very radically altered particularly after the significant amount of international migration in the mid 1990s its turned London into one of the most diverse, nationality and ethnicity, of cities in the world, now possibly the most diverse in terms of ethnicity,'' Prof Travers said.

Prof Travers said it had made the capital's economy particularly more dynamic and joked it had improved British cuisine substantially.

But he said the government had not been prepared for the dramatic change.

''Immigration requires management and I think one of the challenges that still faces London and other parts of the UK where there are high levels of immigrants is how to manage that in a way that makes sense in a country whose public services are heavily constrained by spending cuts or austerity,'' he said.

''The question is also how to balance in a free society people having the freedom to behave and speak the language they want with rational integration it is one of the challenges that faces all societies that have large amounts of international migration. I don't think people can be forced to speak a particular language. On the other hand I think the state, locally and centrally, probably does need to send a signal out to people that you are more likely to prosper in an English speaking country if you are speaking English or French speaking country if you speak French.''

Former Labour Minister Frank Field said the population surge should be treated as ''a state of emergency'' with new measures to rein immigration in.

''This is not so much a wake up call, it is almost time for the firing squad for politicians who have allowed this to happen,'' he said in accusing his own party of allowing immigration unchecked.

In part, Labour Leader Ed Miliband acknowledged mistakes in the past 13 years of his party's power on the question of immigration.

''The capacity of our economy to absorb new migrants was greater than the capacity of some of our communities to adapt,'' he said, adding his party's policy would see less translating of information into other languages and a ban on migrants not proficient in English from working in certain public sector roles.

A recent poll also found people believed immigration over the past decade was too high and that was bad news for the country.

Immigration is now set as the battleground for the next election due in the next two years.Demographer Professor Jane Folkingham, from Southampton University, said people needed to get accustomed to the fact the white protestant image of Britain was no longer the case.

''The growth in ethnic minorities, including white minorities, is really the big change,'' she said.

''For the first time we can actually see the evidence.

''We are getting used to it, the last two years has been a period of rapid change and probably the last time we had such a rapid change was in the 1950s and '60s with the Caribbean migration and those from South Asia, India Pakistan and Bangladesh. You get these periods of rapid change and that's why its so visible at the moment.''

Part of that rapid change is economic, where it is seen as more fruitful to be working in somewhere like London than countries hit by recession like Spain, Poland or Greece where there is little work and smaller pays.Prof Falkingham said the change in religion was interesting since prior to the 2001 census, the question had not been asked and rates rarely measured.

But she said local councils needed to look at the ethnic diversity and make provisions, particularly with groups with high birth rates, such as creating more second language provisions in schools.

To some extent this was already happening with at least 10 schools that don't teach English and another 600 primary schools where English is the second language for 70 per cent of pupils.

Those provisions are possibly better to consider than the ones seen last Christmas where among the usual blaze of blatant commercialism and images of jolly Santas and red nosed reindeers were signs promoting ''Happy Eid'' and ''Happy Diwali''.

It didn't matter that the Muslim Eid al-Adha or Hindu Diwali festivals had both finished the month before or that the Christian nativity scenes depicting the birth of Christ for which the day is marked and so named had long been seen as non-inclusive.

Conservative MP Philip Davies railed last month at local councils and shopping centres for ''sidelining'' Christianity for political correctness perpetuated by ''white middle-class people with some kind of bizarre guilt complex''.

Scotland Yard's most senior Asian officer Chief Supt Dal Babu has also complained about a policy failure that sees, at a time of a black and ethnic majority in London, not one candidate in the latest chief officer ranks course from those communities.

The Black and Minority Ethnic Community Partnership chief officer Doris Ndebele said the growing diversity of Britain was understood for the past 12 years by her community group which aimed to better integrate and encourage community participation.

''I think we are all concerned about the potential for groups to be marginalised but ours is not a popular cause, not many people want to assist, local governments are just big departments but maybe that will all change now. They have the census, they can see it if they didn't see it before.''

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